Telopea · Escholarship.Usyd.Edu.Au/Journals/Index.Php/TEL · ISSN 0312-9764 (Print) · ISSN 2200-4025 (Online)
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Volume 6(4): 541-562 T elopea Publication Date: 1 July 1996 . , . _ . neRoyal dx.doi.org/io.775i/teiopeai9963023 Journal ot Plant Systematics “ 2 ™ plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/Telopea · escholarship.usyd.edu.au/journals/index.php/TEL · ISSN 0312-9764 (Print) · ISSN 2200-4025 (Online) Mabberley, Plant introduction and hybridisation in colonial NSW 541 Plant introduction and hybridisation in colonial New South Wales: the work of John Carne Bidwill, Sydney's first director D.J. Mabberley Abstract Mabberley, D.J. (Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford 0X 1 3PN; and Rijksherbarium, University of Leiden) 1996. Plant introduction and hybridisation in colonial New South Wales: the work of John Carne Bidwill, Sydney's first director. Telopea 6(4): 541-562. A brief biography of J.C. Bidwill, the first Director of the Sydney Gardens, based in part on previously unpublished manuscript sources preserved at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and in the Mitchell Library Sydney, is presented. Bidwill's scientific impact is assessed and there is an appendix of plants named after him; the hitherto unplaced Bidwillia is perhaps referable to Trachyandra (Asphodelaceae). Introduction 'He is, besides being an excellent botanist, a man of general science, a very skillful horticulturist' — William Macarthur on J.C. Bidwill, 17 September 1847 (Macarthur Papers 37(B) Sir William Macarthur Letterbook 4 viii 1844-7 vi 1850 f. 296, A2933-2 Mitchell Library). In celebrating Lawrie Johnson, here his interest in the history of botany, it is perhaps of some value to examine the career of one of his predecessors as Director of the Sydney Gardens — the first holder of that title, John Carne Bidwill (1815-1853) — as it highlights a number of features of nineteenth-century colonial life and attitudes. Although Bidwill is commemorated in the technical name for the well known bunya- bunya pine,Araucaria bidwUlii, as well as in the name of a Sydney suburb, he has perhaps so far been rather little-appreciated as a botanical and horticultural pioneer, while even his name is spelled wrongly in the names of the most commercially significant plants purporting to commemorate him. Having stumbled on a previously unlisted binomial commemorating Bidwill some years ago (Mabberley 1978) and more recently had cause to ascertain the correct name for the single species of the remarkable Australian endemic family Akaniaceae (Gadek et al. 1992), which turned out to beAkania bidwUlii (Mabberley 1989: 707), I became interested in the career of their little-known eponymous hero and here set down my findings to date. The following must be seen as merely amplifying the standard secondary sources (especially Herbert (1966) and references therein) through the examination of the rich MSS holdings at the Mitchell Library, Sydney, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and elsewhere. However, a full assessment of Bidwill's short life can only be made after appraisal of other MSS sources. Moreover the significance of his hybridisation experiments can only be evaluated by those expert in the genetics of the groups concerned. In addition, Professor R. Clough of Double Bay NSW is investigating further Bidwill's hybridising work in Australia and has had the opportunity to delve into aspects of his life not covered here. 542 Telopea Vol. 6(4): 1996 Devon to New South Wales At the end of September 1846, Robert Brown (1773-1858), then the doyen of Australian botany, made a roundabout journey from London to visit his geologist friend, Sir Richard Vyvyan, the Tory MP, who lived in Cornwall (Mabberley 1985: 356). On the way he stayed at the Half Moon Hotel, Exeter, whence he visited the great Devon nurseries of Veitch and of Lucombe, Pince & Co. \ He walked out to the latter, famed for the raising of the hybrid Lucombe Oak, situated in St Thomas's, Exeter and there met Robert Taylor Pince (1804-71), 'an accomplished botanist', who had married Lucombe's niece, and 'added materially to the variety of the Exeter Nursery's collections by judicious hybridising of well known species'2. Pince, who was from an old Exeter family of gardeners, had joined the firm before 1828 (Harvey 1988). By the time of Brown's visit, James Mangles could write that the firm was one of the principal nurseries in England. It was one of those firms which pioneered the despatch of collectors and the introduction of exotics in the 1830s and, by the next decade, had established introductions from Mexico, Brazil, Sierra Leone and Australia. In 1835, at the sale of Colvill's nursery at Chelsea, Pince had bought up the stock of gladiolus hybrids ('G. x insignis', Barnard (1972)) and a little later sent illustrations of the hybrid 'Gladiolus ramosus' as well as G. x insignis to Paxton's Magazine of Botany (published in vol 6(1839)99 & 7(1840)223). Pince showed Brown around his collection, which Brown praised, especially its conifers. It would appear that Pince's work is the background for Australia's pioneering hybridist, John Carne Bidwill, for Bidwill was born at St Thomas's in February 1815, the eldest son of Joseph Green Bidwill, a businessman ('share-broker, superintendent-registrar and joint clerk of St Thomas's U nion'3), and his wife Charlotte Wilmot Bidwill, second daughter of John Carne, an author of Falmouth, Devon4 (Bidwill & Woodhouse 1927, ch. 14). On 4 April 1832, Bidwill had sailed from Plymouth to Canada on the Exmouth but returned in November 1834. He seems to have been back at St Thomas's when the gladiolus work was being carried out by Pince. Early in 1838, he obtained a letter of introduction from Lord Glenelg (1778-1866), Secretary of State for the Colonies, to Major Thomas Mitchell (1792-1855), Surveyor-General and explorer, then in London5. Mitchell in turn wrote a letter of introduction to the Colonial Secretary in New South Wales, Edward Deas Thomson (1800-1879), pointing out that Bidwill was 'respectably connected in Devonshire'. Armed with this, Bidwill, travelling with his sister Elizabeth (born 1817, later Mrs Thomas Digby Miller), set off for New South Wales on the Arachne, a barque of 320 tons6 on Good Friday 13 April 1838 'in the interests of his father's mercantile business' (Bidwill & Woodhouse I.e.). He arrived later that year, intending to settle on the land near Sydney applying for about 2000 acres at 5 /- an acre on 13 December (Bidwill & Woodhouse 1927: 114). In a few days came the Governor's approval for his purchase but there was a delay in the surveying and he took the opportunity, whilst waiting, to make some 'rambles' in New Zealand. It would seem that during his time in Sydney he was collecting seeds, which were received in England in 1839 and raised by Joseph Knight at his Chelsea nursery;Podolobium ilicifolium (Leguminosae) at least was illustrated by Jane Loudon in her Ladies' Magazine of Gardening (1: t. 8, 4, 1841; Mabberley 1978). First New Zealand travels The Bidwill firm was involved in the trade between New South Wales and New Zealand, there being a small European settlement at the Bay of Islands, whither Mabberley, Plant introduction and hybridisation in colonial NSW 543 Bidwill went in February 1839. He sailed to Tauranga in the Bay of Plenty, using it as a base and walking to Rotorua with seven Maoris and, at least at first, a white interpreter. He was collecting both herbarium specimens and live plants, finding near Rotorua the scented Easter orchid, Earina autumnalis, which he was to bring back alive to England 7. He pushed on to Taupo, where only one European had ever been seen (and that was only three weeks previously), carrying medical supplies for the Maoris (Andrews 1990). Crossing Lake Taupo, he reached Lake Rotoaira, exploring the spurs of Tongariro before being recalled in April. He was thus the first European to collect plants in the interior of the North Island; he was also the first European to ascend the cone of the active volcano Ngauruhoe (Anderson 1958) and perhaps the first man to do so as the Maoris would not climb it. The firewood used during the ascent was gathered from plants now known as Halocarpus bidwUlii (Podocarpaceae) and Brachyglottis bidwUlii (Compositae). Among the other plants he collected were Raoulia australis (Compositae, his specimen preserved at K), so small that he took it for a lichen, and a number of species like Acaena microphylla (Rosaceae) and Celmisia spectabilis (Compositae) which he would have liked to have introduced to British gardens. Having not had the blessing of Chief Te Heuheu to climb the mountain, there was in consequence a difficult meeting between the two men, apparently with distrust and lack of understanding on both sides. Despite the danger, Bidwill survived to write an account of his experiences, Rambles in New Zealand (1841), which is a very readable bouncy narrative but includes much original information on the North Island, especially important being observations on agricultural practices, notably the effects of burning. Reprinted in 1952 in a limited edition, the original is now a very rare and valuable book, though perhaps some 500-600 copies were printed in London (Bidwill 1952). The copy presented to his sister Elizabeth has its original 'butcher-paper' cover and is preserved in the Mitchell Library, Sydney and another in original binding is held at the library of Rhodes House, University of Oxford. During his stay Bidwill met the resident botanist, the Reverend William Colenso (1811-1899) and, being recalled to Sydney in April, took a consignment of living and preserved plants with him, losing a few of the live ones during the voyage (Bidwill and Woodhouse 1927: 114).